Dwelling

This is a work in progress, as are all of my poems at this stage, and it is meant to address a myriad of themes, perhaps too much for it to contain. However, the writer presses the words and images for more. Theologically as well, it considers a dual perspective in both the process of a relationship breaking and the process of redemption and restoration. It is not meant to conclude anything other than that there is a people and there is a God, and they are in relationship to one another. (*I am forever irritated by blogspot's changing my spacing, tabs, etc. as it interferes with how one reads/encounters the poem--oh well, buy the book someday)

Setting sun casts eerie shadows behind the altar
Autumn’s chill has entered through the side door
Recorded organ music cascades down wooden shafts onto concrete floor
This must be the scent of God
Dripping wax over candle’s edge
Paneled wood, moist and aged
What worship dwells within these walls
Craftsmanship meant to delight no person but God alone
Arches drawing upward as hands, reaching evermore to the Seat Invisible
Perhaps He resides here
Making a silent home in the history of this place
Speaking still to the occasionally filled seats

But the silences echo other evidences
As dark becomes this home of God

That this home has closed its doors to Him and He no longer dwells in its walls
Tomb-like and abandoned, put to bed long ago
By bloodied swords, greedy Kings and Queens, penance paid for eternity saved
Perhaps God lived here,
In the royal processions
In causes deemed worthy by the populous
In the right to live free—egalite, liberte, fraternite—though chains remained

But God has left and bid farewell to a past He never intended to claim
And the people know not to hunger for a New Presence
History and its demons have taught them well and killed their God

Yet would He cry for them and ask for them and want them
Yet would He fill this darkened temple again with his presence of light
And animate again the lives of a weary people
Yet would He cup their faces in His hands and name them precious
Yet would He return to a land doubtful of God, of good, of redemption

Cry, the worn land, and seek
That ye may be found
And comforted by He whom we have all thought dead